I have had the privilege of visiting Israel three times. On the first occasion, in 2007, I spent several hours at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, including a tour of the Dome of the Rock, where the Jewish Temple stood during Jesus’ life, until its destruction by Rome in AD 70. Beneath the great gilt …
The first Christian creeds
One of the earliest statements of trust in Jesus is beautifully captured by the author of the Fourth Gospel. In John 9, Jesus encounters a man blind from birth, and heals him. Later, the man shares his personal testimony with the Jewish religious leaders: “I was blind, and now I can see!” (v. 25). Later …
Creeds in the Hebrew Bible
A creed is a concise, formal, public and authoritative statement of key religious beliefs. For Christians, a creed is validated by Scripture, and is a formula “in which the church’s understanding of the gospel is laid bare.”[1] The classic Christian creeds invoke the story of Jesus and the experience of the first Christians, and there …
The danger of dogma
A few years ago, while browsing Dogmatic Theology by W. G. T. Shedd, a friend expressed surprise that such a book was in print today. To be fair, the book was originally published in three volumes from 1888-1894, and the title dates from that period. It seemed somehow out of place in the 2020s. In theology, the word …
What is a creed?
The second in a series of posts about religious creeds and confessions. A creed is a short formal statement expressing religious truth. The English word “creed” derives from the Latin credo, “I believe.” This implies both assent to concepts and trust or reliance upon the implications of such concepts. A creed, therefore, is firstly a personal confession of faith, and a personal …
iDigress 